The Cambrian Explosion saw an incredible diversity ... These animals hunted along the seabed, where colonies of archaic sponges grew on organic, mineral structures formed by the activity of ...

This expansion might have contributed to the subsequent diversification of body plans in the Cambrian explosion. In the evolution of metazoans, sponges diverged first, followed by cnidarians ...

and sponges. Then, about 540 million years ago, something else changed ... dramatically. It was the time of the Cambrian Explosion, an eruption of life when Earth’s very first animals began ...

sponges and comb jellies. Some of the best information about early animals comes from fossils dating back to the Cambrian period, which started around 541 million years ago. During this time ...

A pink sponge, photographed at an aquarium today, is not unlike one of the first life forms that appeared in the Precambrian era. Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark The ...